The oldest bass i've ever played was my old bass teacher's DB from the late 1600's (I think). One of the most beautiful sounding instruments I have ever heard.......well......when he played it. It wasn't so great with me behind it haha.
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Oldest Bass you've played?
- Thread starter kombi
- Start date
I own '77 P-bass which is great and it has a nice warm sound. I still need to get used to the neck since I am a J-bass user. It is a bit heavy for me but the sounds are worth the weight. Overall I like the bass and the sound. I also own a late 70's Westminster J-bass. It is a squire model for Motsumoku fender copy. The construction is not very good and the pick ups are weak. It has a good feel neck wise and playability but poor sound.
Actually electric guitars were popular with big bands then because of the difficulty of being heard with an acoustic. I think I've seen pictures of a number of guitar amps from that era. And big bands also used PA amps usually for the singer (also to be heard) that looked very much like the guitar amps (or vice versa). And I might add that talking movies also had audio systems that were similar. But basses upright or guitar were not amplified until later and even in the 50's I had to build my own bass cab though heads (PA amps) were pretty widely available.
In the 30s Amps were like this:
1930's Erwood mono tube amplifier preamplifier fot guitar / theatre / pa system | eBay
Pretty low power (my upright bass rig from the late 50s was 20 watts). As I've said before here, in those days (late 50's) there were basically two pickups you could buy for an upright: a piezo one and a magnetic one. Both were huge and to be stuck to the front of the bass near a sound hole. BOTH sucked! Most guys used a mic and PA in spite of the feedback problems. I built my own piezo out of a harmonica pickup and mounted it on the bridge which was a new idea then.
In the late 30's however, there were some pretty decent amps. My cousin had this old 1930's radio. it was amazing. It had a huge amp in it that looked a lot like what a tube Hi Fi amp would look like only used old style tubes. It even had "woofers" (one 12") and "tweeters" (two 6" ) and all ran with electromagnets.
One main feature of 1930 amps and PA systems was the speakers always used electromagnets rather than the modern permanent magnets. And then they used the magnet coil as a choke for the power supply! So the PA systems either came with a speaker or the speaker box had to be very close to the amp.
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I played a '59 P in Austin this summer. I fell in love with the neck on it and it didn't sound too bad either.
I've played a bunch of 60's basses, Univox,Harmony's, Teisco style, acouple of Fender P-basses. The oldest one I still own is a 1966 St.George hollow body Rosewood ,sort of like a Gretch.
Early sixties stack knob Jazz .
One of my best friends in high school back in 1969 owned it and I used it at jams or at his house when we were hanging out . I only liked short scales back then so I didn't really like Fenders but his played and sounded better than most to me . My bass was a 65 EBO at the time .
Late in the 70's I played a 64 P bass that was another buddies in a country-rock band . He was a guitar player and my bass was an aluminum neck Kramer . He brought it to one of our gigs and said if I liked it I could use it at gigs . It played like butter , didn't weigh anything and sounded way better than my Kramer so I played it for a couple years .
One of my best friends in high school back in 1969 owned it and I used it at jams or at his house when we were hanging out . I only liked short scales back then so I didn't really like Fenders but his played and sounded better than most to me . My bass was a 65 EBO at the time .
Late in the 70's I played a 64 P bass that was another buddies in a country-rock band . He was a guitar player and my bass was an aluminum neck Kramer . He brought it to one of our gigs and said if I liked it I could use it at gigs . It played like butter , didn't weigh anything and sounded way better than my Kramer so I played it for a couple years .
Nice! I trust you got them before they broke the 10K barrier?
I know I passed on a bunch of cool stuff in the late 80's - what was I thinking?
52 (I'm pretty sure, definitely not contoured) Precision Bass. Not kidding on the baseball bat neck, dang. It was Black, and you could see the sunburst coming through beneath. Twas a thing of beauty. Plugged it into an old portaflex, and it was strung up with rounds (which I love, but I found kinda odd in this instance), and damn, that sound is ridiculous. Wish I had that sort of cash.
61 pbass/ 2 - 65 ampeg scrolls AEB/AUB/ 65 hofner club. all are great and will never part with them
